bout de papier, Vol. 19, No. 2 (2002) — Summer/Fall 2002 // Été/Automne 2002, pp. 41–43
It was a stressful week for the Centre. Felix Africa was advising the Prime Minister’s Office that asking “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and waddles with a limp, what is it?” did not constitute treason, even for a former Minister. External Affairs web gurus had brought “common look and feel” online at the same time as a new artificial intelligence program, which then decided to impose its own definitions. So Bugbyte O’Nanotek was busy preventing “common” from getting downright “sordid”. While investigating a rumoured plot by poultry farmers to corner the Thanksgiving market, Inspector Wu and Attila McGee discovered a walk-in freezer in Wawa holding dozens of flash-frozen yuppies with Leadership Convention accreditation, badges proclaiming “PM for PM” and instructions to “Defrost and Vote”. The farmer claimed “there’s nothing but turkeys in that freezer, and the PMO issued a press statement concurring.
Sily de logician dig Liehmick heard Chief MaBank mourne “It’s the biggest global crisis since the Swiss caught Papa
Jack Paridy putting robes on a crucifix and brought him up on charges of crossdressing.” Absent-mindedly dunking a cookie in his inkwell, he added “Rialto Sleazewagon again — as a freelancer, worse than ever. A closed session of the Security Council this morning had just voted to authorize action by ’all necessary meanies’— too literally true to be anything but a typo — against a certain recalcitrant state. Sleazewagon snuck in disguised as an itinerant Icelandic inchworm inspector and sprayed the entire room with a gas that gave everyone temporary paralysis and permanent amnesia. While no-one could move, he destroyed all the working papers and recordings of the session. Now no-one knows who they condemned. If this gets out, his employer gets off the hook. I’ve set our newest agent to gather clues. He should have been here half an hour ago.”
A young man burst from MacBannock’s closet, executed a grand jeté ending with a crash behind the sofa and came up with a large pistol in each hand. Dressed in wheat-coloured khakis, dusty campaign boots and a propellor beanie, he announced tersely, “Manitoba Jones reporting, Chief. No-one move ’til I get my feet out of this aspidistra.” MacBannock scowled and asked, “Why are you late? And what were you doing in my closet?” “Approaching the building, I noticed guards at the door. I therefore effected an entrance by hiding in a pot of licorice gumbo in the cafeteria delivery truck, climbed an elevator shaft, got off one floor early and used a letter-opener to carve a hole in the floor of your closet.”
Liebnitz sputtered, “But you have a building pass. The guards would have let you in.” “It does no harm to stay in practice, sir.” “I can’t wait to hear how you got into the UN.” “Through the Chagall stained glass window into the chapel.” “But that window doesn’t open!” “It does now, sir. I took a short-cut through the heating ducts to a bar above the Council chamber and climbed down from the rafters on a ladder made from swizzle sticks. Here are the clues I gleaned from interviews with the Council members — pretty scattered, I’m afraid.” He handed two sheets of paper to the logician. “Sorry, I have to dash. Something about tutus in Tuvalu. Ta-ta.”
Glancing at the stopwatch on his wrist, he threw himself backward out the window, four floors above the street. Liebnitz sprang to the sill just in time to see Jones bounce to his feet in the back of an open truck marked “ACME Mattress”, speeding by on the road below. Seconds later, he was knocked over by a low branch and toppled face-first into a manure spreader tailgating the truck.
Just then, Doña Esmeralda stormed into the room to say that a lunatic had forced his way into her office, immediately below MacBannock’s, tied her to a chair and cut a trapdoor in the ceiling. “And why are you dunking that shortbread in your inkwell, Chief?” ’Oh damnation. I thought it was a gingersnap!” Liebnitz sighed and said, “OK, let’s see what the pride of Flin Flon came up with. Hmmm. Fairly straightforward.”
There are seven possible target countries. The justification for action against each of them was evaluated by considering twelve criteria, as listed in the attached chart, with a “yes” or “no” entered into the appropriate boxes. The target country was the one with the most “yes” boxes, standing apart from the rest as a global pariah. The following clues reflect what can be reconstructed of the completed chart. Countries are identified by their position in the chart (A to G) or by CODENAMES. Unless otherwise clarified, the fact that a country is said to have certain Yes or No answers does not necessarily mean this represents its full count of that answer.
1 All 84 boxes are marked Yes or No,
of which exactly 50 are Yes. No
country received a full twelve Yes
and each country’s TOTAL YES is
different.
Question I and just two others got
seven Yes each. No question got
seven No and only one got six.
DEMENTED WOODCHUCK and
the country in column A both have
Yes for questions 2, 4, 6 and10.
SHUFFLING COBRA and the coun-
try in the column to its immediate
left both have No for questions 3, 10
and 12.
Column E has twice as many Yes
(including box E 9) as No (includ-
ing box E 10).
RED WEASEL has exactly five No,
including one for question 5.
7 Boxes B 9, E 2 and G 10 are all No.
Only questions 2 and 8 got exactly
five No.
9 PUNK PANTHER, in column C, has
three times as many No as Yes.
10 Fand one of its adjacent columns
always have the same answers to
the same question, except those
to question 10.
11 GROUCHING TIGER has No for
questions 2, 8 and 10.
12 Both A and B have Yes for ques-
tion 5.
13 The TOTAL YES for column B is an
even number.
14 RABID WALRUS and the country
in column G both have No for ques-
tion 8 and Yes for question 12, but
their answers differ on question 5
and on question 9.
5 Country D has No for questions 4
and 6 and a TOTAL YES of 5.
16 Country B has Yes for questions 2,
4 and 12.
17 HOLY GOATS has Yes for questions
5 and 9 and is immediately to the
left of the column with the third-
highest TOTAL YES.
Putting their heads together while MacBannock applied a mixture of single malt and industrial strength bleach to his teeth, Ludwig and Esmeralda soon had the table restored. As they mulled over the totals and their implications, the Chief’s phone rang and he picked it up. “Agent John W Pilgrim here,’ “ said a voice. “Who?” “Just a friendly warning — moral equivalency can be bad for your health.” “What?” “Operation Hippo Moustache must go through.” “What?” “All we are saying is — give war a chance.” “What?” “Oh, and please talk closer to that rosebud on your desk.” The Chief straightened up and said firmly, “You have reached the office of Hamish MacBannock. I cannot take your call just now. If you have any message to leave, please do so at the sound of the ’click’” And he hung up.
Can you duplicate Ludwig’s and Esmeralda’s feat by providing the CODE- NAMES and related TOTAL YES count for all seven countries on the chart? bout de papier will decide the winner by drawing from a box containing all correct entries received by January 30, 2003. The winner will receive a year’s subscription to Harpers magazine.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 19, No. 2 (2002) — Summer/Fall 2002 // Été/Automne 2002, pp. 41–43. Read the rest of this issue →
